Patrick F. Bassett, NAIS President bassettnais.org

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Governance 201 New Models For Independent Schools
Patrick F. Bassett, NAIS Presidentbassett_at_nais.or
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101 The Traditional ModelIt is easier to ask
forgiveness than permission.Distinct Job
Descriptions for the Four Power Players
The Faculty
The Board of Trustees

Decision-Making
The Head Administration
The Parents The Parents Association ( The
Advisory Board or Alumni Board)
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Model Meltdown Boundary Crossings

• ...by the Board e.g., bullying the head or
  misreading the culture of schools
• by Parents e.g., assuming a stockholder posture
  politicizing demands the telephone call to
  the trustee All the parents think.
• To Avoid The S.U.V. caucus (parking lot mafia)
• New banner policy for schools Having your
  say does not equal getting your way.
• Parental Signed Covenants and Parents on
  Probation
• by the Head e.g., free-lancing on policy or
  getting out too far in front of the troops
• You must always cultivate the favor of the
  inhabitants. Machiavelli
• by the Faculty e.g., subverting administrative
  or board policies, undermining collegiality, or
  ignoring the quid pro quo with parents. (That
  child doesnt fit my teaching style.)
• Case Study on Admissions

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Inherent Dangers for Corporate Boards(Source
What Business Execs Dont Know-but should-about
Nonprofits, Les Silverman Lynn Taliento,
Stanford Social Innovation Review, Summer 2006)

• What Business Execs Dont Know-but should-about
  Nonprofits
• Under-appreciate the challenges of non-profit
  leaders.
• Disdain not-for-profit management, thinking its
  undisciplined and non-quantified.
• Discount how much harder it is to define and
  achieve goals which tend to be more complex and
  intangible (curing cancer or saving social
  security or educating children).
• Misapply business metrics to non-profits RoI
  hard to measure.
• Underestimate how frustrating and difficult board
  work for non-profits is cant accommodate the
  nonprofit sectors different culture and demands.

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Inherent Dangers for Corporate Boards(Source
What Business Execs Dont Know-but should-about
Nonprofits, Les Silverman Lynn Taliento,
Stanford Social Innovation Review, Summer 2006)

• What Business Execs Dont Know-but should-about
  Nonprofits
• Cant identify with the major challenges for
  non-profit leaders school heads wield less
  authority and control than CEOs yet they must
  answer to a wider range of stakeholders lack
  straightforward performance measures yet they
  are under greater scrutiny from politicians, the
  press, and constituents compared to the
  corporate world, the nonprofit sector is
  under-funded, under-staffed, under-resourced, and
  under-trained.
• PFB notes
• Cant improve productivity and services via
  technology in people-intensive industry Baumols
  disease.
• More like families than businesses Why a School
  Doesnt Run (or Change) Like a Business, Rob
  Evans.
• Legislative vs. executive leadership command
  and control not possible or advisable. Good to
  Great in the Social Sectors, Jim Collins.

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Models of Governance New Themes

• Leadership vs. Management being effective vs.
  being efficient.
• Peter Drucker Doing the right thing (leading)
  vs. doing things right (managing).
• BoardSource Are you a board-dominant
  policy-setting board (Carver-model)
  CEO-dominant traditional board (corporate model)
  or a balanced partnership" board (Harvard/Chait
  model)?
• NAIS Pat Bassett Key management skills for
  heads are monitoring shaping school climate and
  values school finances/fund-raising managing
  personnel partnering with the board and
  mayoral duties of keeping peace among warring
  constituencies. Key leadership skills for heads
  are
• story-telling and change agency For change
  to happen, first leaders must model the change,
  then lead the change, then become the change.

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Models of Governance New Themes

• High-Impact Governance (Doug Eadie) Boards
  that pay attention to constituents, initiate new
  directions, evaluate and re-design themselves.
• Generational Governance (Tom Peters) Does the
  board reflect the past, the present, and the
  future?
• Constituency-based vs. Vision-based Governance
  (Christina Drouin--planonline.com ) old
  structures about politics and money new
  structures about outcomes and performance.
• Groups vs. Teams (Lisa Parkerstricklandgroup.com)
  progression from forming, storming, normingto
  performing.

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Developing the Board(Board Member, May 2004,
Chait et al.)

• The SAT Analogy
• Our board is to our school
• as is to .

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Problem Solving via Strategic Governance

• Needed Three Levels of Trusteeship
• Level One Fiduciary (auditing function of
  oversight and assessment of mission finance)
• Level Two Strategic (leadership function less
  management/more governance via scanning and
  planning)
• Level Three Generative (visionary function of
  shared leadership, RD orientation for imagining
  and experimenting).

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Three Levels of Board Governance(Adapted from
Board Member, May 2004, Chait et al.)
The antidote to micromanagement is
macroengagement.Dick Chait. 3-tier thinking
applied to problem-solving?
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Three-Tier Thinking

• Address Rising Benefit Costs
• Fiduciary thinking Increase co-pays to share
  costs with employees
• Strategic thinking Market our absorbing of
  increased costs as recruitment/retention benefit
• Generative thinking Form a benefit-purchasing
  consortium and/or incentivize employees to
  choose less expensive plans or no plan if covered
  by spouse.

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Three-Tier Thinking

• Add another Foreign Language Which one?
• Fiduciary thinking OK which other language do
  we drop?
• Strategic thinking Why dont we offer small
  enrollment courses (language or whatever) on an a
  la carte pricing basis?
• Generative thinking
• Why are we teaching low enrollment languages?
  (German after WWII, Russian after Sputnik, Arabic
  now, Chinese next?) vs. Chinese is strategic in
  a way that a lot of other languages arent.
  Scott McGinnis
• Should we form a consortium to offer Mandarin?

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Emerging Governance Issues

• Accountability to the Government the
  post-Enron/Global Crossings/United Way world.
• Margaret Spellings message to private schools
  In God we trust.
• All others bring data.
• Sarbanes-Oxley expectations for non-profits means
  more transparency (new 990 regs), more oversight
  (audit committees).
• IRS private sector study Will scrutinize sixty
  schools. Our greatest vulnerability executive
  compensation for highly compensated,
  disqualified persons. The threat of
  intermediate sanctions and the safe harbor of
  rebuttable presumptions.

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Emerging Governance Issues

• Accountability to our Constituencies
• Safety and security Background checking on all
  who cross the threshold (parents, visitors,
  workmen high tech solutions. Protecting children
  from Internet predators (www.myspace.com) vs.
  capitalizing on Web 2.0 future.
• Features vs. benefits While savvy consumers like
  the former, they demand the latter.
• High stakes testing NCLBs impact on public
  schools. The inevitable threat of the education
  governor. The lack of a universal, proactive,
  private school benchmark. One-day soon, an
  expectation for world-class standards with a
  metric to measure them. (PISA/ISA from ACER.)

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Emerging Governance Issues

• Strategy-Making Strategic planning is dead.
• If you want to give God a laugh, tell Him your
  future plans (German Proverb). New Model an
  ongoing flexible strategic vision road
  map" (rather than a fixed and rigid plan)
• Goal Moving the school from
• Vision Sustainable Schools
• Schools that are demographically,
  environmentally, globally, programmatically, and
  financially sustainable
• Trustees who come on board to make a difference
  and depart the board by leaving a legacy.

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Emerging Governance Issues

• Parent Issues
• Parents on boards. Balance of board make-up?
  Inherent conflict of interest?
• Do teachers hate parents?
• Resources Michael Thompsons Understanding
  Parents Wendy Mogels The Blessings of the
  Skinned Knee. NAIS Parent Guide Series
  Understanding your Child Surviving the College
  Search Gifts that Give Back etc.

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Resources for Boards

• www.nais.org Search on topics by term (e.g.,
  tuition remission Browse Library for
  Leadership Governance. In About NAIS, click
  on Principles of Good Practice. Scroll down to
  governance in the Frequently Asked Questions
  (FAQs) section under Resources Statistics
• NAIS Publications for Trustees Trustee Handbook
  Trustee Pamphlet Services. Order from the
  publications page on the NAIS website.
• Head Board Evaluations Tools NAIS Survey
  Center. BoardSources Board Online Assessment
  Tool (BOAT) and Head Assessment Tool (HAT).
• BoardSource General resources for Non-profits.
• Case studies and resources on issues of
  principled decision-making. Also search for
  case studies on www.nais.org and www.csee.org
  and www.globalethics.org.
• Email NAIS for assistance (when all else fails!)
  boardhelp_at_nais.org

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Skepticism about Self-reported Features

• Levitt Dubners Freakonomics on Online-Dating
  Data
• 4 claim income 200K (vs. nationally)
• Men reported themselves, on average 1 taller
  than the national average 4 of men reported
  themselves as happily married.
• Women reported themselves as 20 pounds less than
  the national average 70 of women indicated they
  were above average in looks, and only 1
  reported themselves less than average in looks
  28 reported themselves as blond, indicating a
  lot of dyeing or lying or both.
• Greatest number of responses from women were to
  men who indicated they wanted a long-term
  relationship greatest number of responses from
  men were to women who said they just want a
  casual lover.

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Governance Case Studies

• The Brutal Facts
• Download from http//www.blueskybroadcast.com/Cli
  ent/NAIS/Case/case.html
• NAIS Case Study 31 Admissions Package Deal
  Who makes the call on development admits?
• (NAISs Take on the Issues)

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Case 31 The Case of the Package Deal
Leadership Issues in Play Ethical Practices at
Stake

• Should the development office and the board have
  any role in attempting to influence admissions
  decisions?
• How is this case different from a faculty coach
  trying to influence an admissions admit for a
  star hockey player with marginal academic
  credentials?
• Whats the role of the head of school in a
  stand-off between the development/board interests
  and the admissions office/faculty interests?
• How does the admissions director react when a
  head, however lightly, pressures her to consider
  factors beyond the match of the student to the
  school?
• How does a school handle the conflict with
  another independent school who believes your
  school to be poaching its students?

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Case 31 The Case of the Package Deal
NAISs Take on the Leadership Issues in Play
PGPs at Stake

• Trustees like all other supporters of the school
  are welcome to encourage appropriate applicants
  to the school and to share recommendations on
  students and families. The boundary line gets
  crossed when the recommendation becomes lobbying,
  since the boards role is to stipulate the
  general type of student the mission dictates the
  school should accept (e.g., college-prep) but
  delegate to the head and his team the execution,
  the operational decisions about which qualifying
  students to admit.
• Its naïve to think that development
  considerations would have any less influence than
  other considerations (athletics, legacies,
  faculty children, etc.), so long as the candidate
  matches the profile of those students who can
  succeed at the school.
• In a stand-off between the development/board
  interests and the admissions office/faculty
  interests, the head makes the call (and takes the
  hit from one constituency or the other).

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Admissions The Case of the Prominent Family
Package Deal Scott Looney
NAISs Take on the Leadership Issues in Play
PGPs at Stake

• The heads team member (admissions director)
  needs to raise the ethical issues to his or her
  head if the head is wont to ignore them Part of
  the job of admin team members is to manage up
  and to be especially sensitive to ethical issues
  and principles of good practice.
• In competition for students (and faculty),
  neighboring independent schools need to accept
  the ambiguity involved in competing Principles of
  Good Practice that assert collegial relationships
  as key between the schools but also note the free
  market right of parents to shop for the best
  match for their kids (or for faculty to explore
  other employment options). It is fair to point
  out that when parents break contracts they have a
  consequence (requirement to pay full tuition in
  many cases). When faculty break a contract, their
  consequence is the attitude that most heads
  adopt I wouldnt want someone in our school who
  breaks a contract, especially at a late date, and
  certainly wouldnt recommend that person to
  another school.

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